Swindon, UK. An expatriate aid worker will be paid on average four times more (and sometimes much more) than a local employee doing a similar job, with local salaries pushing workers below the poverty line.

The findings have already led to the formation of an international Task Force to promote a fair day's work for a fair day's pay for workers and to develop organizational capacity in lower income countries.


An expatriate aid worker is paid on average four times more (and sometimes much more) than a local employee doing a similar job, with local salaries pushing workers below the poverty line. Stuart Carr explains: "Such disparity can have repercussions beyond just employee dissatisfaction. Our findings show a keen sense of injustice on the part of locally-salaried workers, coupled with demotivation and low levels of job satisfaction raises the desire to work abroad. This, in turn, contributes to local brain drain — the mass departure of technically skilled people from one country to another."

The study was led by Stuart C. Carr, a psychologist with Massey University (New Zealand), and Malcolm MacLachlan of Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), within an interdisciplinary consortium of colleagues from eight other countries.

The researchers examined the impact of dual salaries on local workers’ motivation in the health, education and business sectors of several countries when they have worked with expatriate aid workers.

They surveyed 1,290 local and internationally remunerated professional workers from 202 aid, government educational and business organizations. The data came from land-locked (Malawi, Uganda), Oceanic (Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea) and emerging economies (India, China).The researchers also found that wage gaps can prevent capacity development, the overall objective of the aid organizations, from occurring. These development activities often include supporting local training, provision of equipment and staff expertise.

Professor MacLachlan says: "organizations can play a key role in workers' sense of identity and worth by making pay and benefits fairer and thus improving human services, productivity and poverty reduction itself. Above all, we must avoid international aid working against itself that is becoming a capacity stripping problem.

Options for addressing this wage inequality include creating career plans, performance appraisals and job evaluations - for example through workplace goal-setting, structured feedback and job-sizing. This would help put to work the remaining Paris Declaration principles of ownership, results and mutual accountability."

By demonstrating that salary discrepancies result from expatriates who originate from higher income economies rather than different levels of experience or skills the researchers were instrumental in setting up the Task Force — which recently made its first full submission to the United Nations.

The Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology aims to pursue a new mission which calls for greater attention to organizations and their dealings with their people — as part of the Millennium Development Goals from the UN’s program, Keeping the Promise. And they plan to work through bodies such as the United Nations and the International Labour organization, as well as policy think-tanks such as the organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Professor Carr continues: "We have argued that the role and impact of organizations and organizational cultures should be given much more attention, as the project findings showed that organizations can be key to enabling a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and to promoting the perception of greater work justice and equity."

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